Unlaced By The Highland Duke

‘And so we shall. Shall we sail from Muck?’

‘No, from home. Do you know where my home is?’

She turned to search the map, tracing the road from Inveraray.

‘Here?’

‘A little more, no...’ He was straining to reach upwards and she picked him up. He stiffened for a moment and then adjusted to settle on her hip and poked one still-plump finger to the tip of a tiny spit of green surrounded by blue. The colour was a little faded there, as if it had been touched often. By Jamie or by a younger Benneit Lochmore?

‘Here.’

He was not very heavy, though he was taller than her four-year-old cousin, Philip. His arm curved around her neck as he leaned forward to show her the point of the map and his body was snug against hers. She often held her cousins’ children. It was part of what she did—Aunt Joane picked up and put down and fetched and fixed and...

And this was different.

She did not pick this boy up because he expected it of her, but because he didn’t expect it at all. She saw it the moment he was brought into the drawing room that morning by his elderly nurse and the scarred, red-haired giant. He was, like his father, an island, self-sufficient and inward-looking despite his cheerfulness. Six years ago she’d noticed the same quality in Benneit Lochmore—behind the smiling charm was something still and watchful and unreachable. It had made her uncomfortable around him, as if he could see past her own armour and read her secret, resentful thoughts.

‘You have pretty hair,’ Jamie said, his voice dreamy.

She almost dropped him, but his legs tightened around her waist.

‘I do?’

‘It is like the colour of the desert in my new book. Papa bought it in the great big book store and it is my favourite book and Papa reads it to me, but I can find words, too. I will explore the desert when I am big. There are camels! Do you know what a camel is?’

‘Tell me.’

‘It is like a horse because you ride it, but it has a hill on its back and it has a sad face like Flops. Flops is my dog.’

‘I like his name.’

‘His real name is Molach, which means hairy, but I call him Flops because he does—he comes into a room and flops. Like a rug. A hairy rug.’

‘This I must see.’ She laughed.

‘Apparently, you shall,’ a much deeper voice said behind them.

Jo stiffened, but did not let go of Jamie as she turned to face the Duke.

He stood in the doorway and there was such animosity in his eyes she had to resist hugging Jamie’s body to her like a shield. The moment he entered the drawing room she noted how much he had changed in the years since she had last seen him, but the difference between this man, with the grey beginning to show at his temples, with his jaw tense and unshaven and his eyes narrowed with resentment, and the younger man she remembered was even more pronounced, as if he had aged again in the short moments that passed. He looked like the Duke of Lochmore might have looked two hundred years ago as he prepared to enter battle to defend his domain. Which was perhaps an accurate depiction of the state of affairs as he saw it.

She lowered Jamie.

‘Am I? I admit to being surprised. I wagered my aunt you would dismiss her offer.’

‘Had it been an offer, believe me, I would have dismissed it. Jamie, come here.’

‘Are you angry, Papa?’

She met the Duke’s dark green eyes, watching as fury was called back like troops from a failed attack. This expression of cold blankness was also new to her. She thought she had taken Lochmore’s measure six years ago in London when he had fallen under Bella’s prodigious spell, but perhaps not.

‘Yes, Jamie. But not with you,’ he answered, smiling at his son. There was nothing feigned about the smile and it surprised her. It was also new to her, despite having seen him smile often at Bella.

‘With Auntie Theale? Or Cousin Joane?’ Jamie asked, half-anxious, half-curious.

‘Mostly with myself, Jamie. Never mind. Come say your goodbyes to Lady Theale.’

‘But Auntie Theale does not like feet, Papa. Shall I fetch my shoes first?’

Lochmore inspected Jamie’s stockinged feet before looking at Jo, his long eyelashes only half-veiling the mocking challenge in his eyes.

‘No. I think not.’

Chapter Three

‘My pudding box hurts,’ Jamie moaned, shifting on the carriage seat.

‘Close your eyes and try to sleep, Jamie,’ Benneit replied without any real conviction even as he nudged the small basin out from under the carriage seat with his boot in readiness for the inevitable.

He hated leaving Jamie alone in Scotland when he came to London, but the journey itself was purgatorial. After Jamie’s first excitement, bouncing around the carriage and watching the sights of London, he became steadily more ill and miserable, which made Benneit cantankerous and miserable, which made Nurse Moody morose and miserable.

Adding Joane Langdale to the mix had so far not achieved his aunt’s desired effect. The past few miles had passed in silence, Jamie leafing through the little book of maps Benneit had bought him at Hatchard’s, Nurse Moody dozing and snorting occasionally, and Joane Langdale gazing absently out the window. Now that disaster was nigh, Benneit contemplated taking the coward’s way out and switching with Angus who rode a hired hack alongside the carriage.

‘It hurts, Papa...’ Jamie moaned again and Benneit straightened, but before he reached for the basin Joane Langdale took Jamie on to her lap, turning his face towards the window with a light sweep of her hand down his ashen cheek.

‘That’s because you have forgotten to feed it,’ she murmured.

‘I don’t want food,’ Jamie cried.

‘Not food, silly. Stories. Your poor belly knows there are dozens and dozens passing us by outside and you haven’t offered it even one. No wonder it is upset.’

Jamie glanced out the window. They were cresting a rise and overlooking fields and a few houses tucked against a copse of old oaks. There was nothing but bland English countryside and as a distraction it was woefully inadequate. Benneit frowned at Joane, but she either didn’t notice or ignored him.

‘I don’t see any stories.’ Jamie said suspiciously and Joane’s brows rose, making her eyes look even larger.

‘Really? What about Farmer Scrumpett’s performing pig over there?’

Jamie leaned towards the window, his small hand catching the frame.

‘Where?’

‘Well, you just missed it, but there are other stories everywhere. See that little house over there, the white one?’

Jamie leaned his forehead against the window, both hands splayed on the frame now.

‘That one?’

‘Exactly. That is where Mrs Minerva Understone resides with her magical mice. That is why the house is painted white, you see. Because of the cats.’

‘Cats don’t like white?’

‘Oh, no, they love it. It makes them think of milk and they come by the score.’

‘But cats eat mice!’

‘Well, that is true, but not magical mice. You see, cats chase mice because they are each trying to find their one magical mouse and they become very cross when they don’t, which is why they eat them. Did you know that cats and mice were once best of friends? And that mice were once as big as cats and twice as clever? But then an evil sorcerer cast a spell over them and made them small and meek. Well, for one day each year, the spell is lifted and all the cats remember their friends and come to Mrs Minerva Understone’s cottage and they dance and play as they once did before the spell.’

‘I don’t see any cats.’

‘That is because they only come once a year, on Summer’s Solstice.’

Jamie frowned.

‘That is a sad story.’

‘It is both sad and isn’t. It would be sadder still if they did not have that special day when they remembered they liked each other.’

‘But why does this happen at this Minderda’s cottage? Is she a wizard, too?’

‘Oh, yes. A very powerful one. Minerva taught me a spell once, would you like to hear it?’

‘A real spell?’

‘Well, no, it is more a song about a spell. This is how it goes.’ Joane Langdale cleared her throat, lowered her chin. ‘Boil and bubble, toil and trouble, you’d best put on your shoes or I’ll shave all your stubble.’

Jamie burst into laughter.

‘That wasn’t Minerva, that was Auntie Theale!’

‘Goodness, was it? Well, perhaps they’re secret sisters.’

‘Minerva sounds far too benevolent to be related to Lady Theale,’ Benneit interjected and Joane Langdale looked over at him, her eyes warm with his son’s laughter, but Jamie tugged at her sleeve.

‘Tell me more stories, Cousin Joane.’

‘Very well, but you must call me Jo. Cousin Joane doesn’t tell stories, she finds shawls and hems handkerchiefs. It is Jo who tells stories.’

‘Which one are you?’ Jamie asked seriously.

‘Some days I am one and some days I am the other. Just like some days you are an explorer and some days you are Jamie who cannot find his shoes.’

He grinned.

‘I always know where they are, but some days I don’t wish to find them.’

‘Exactly. So today I do not wish to find Cousin Joane and so I am Jo.’

‘Tell me another story, Jo. If you please,’ he amended, and she shifted him on her lap so that he was once again looking out the window.

‘Very well, tell me what you see and I shall tell you a story about it.’

Jamie’s hand traced up and down the window frame as he searched the landscape.

‘That,’ he said finally, his voice hushed. ‘That big tree near the stream.’

‘Oh, that tree. You are a true explorer, Jamie. Not many would have seen how wondrous that tree is...’

Benneit leaned back, half-listening to the story that unfolded, with foxes and rabbits and a goat who sounded amazingly like Godfrey, Bella’s brother, and a weasel who sounded even more impressively like Celia, Bella’s sister. There was also a little girl who had been taken captive by a blind but kindly old mole so she could help him search for a quizzing glass lost in one of a myriad of tunnels. It was both absurd and touching and, most importantly, it held Jamie captive, his eyes searching the landscape for the places she mentioned—a little hut, a grizzled old man walking a pig, a shape in the clouds.

Finally, Jamie’s fascinated questions began to flag. He yawned and leaned back against Mrs Langdale’s shoulder, his eyelids slipping. Her voice continued, sinking into dusk, but it was only when Jamie’s body gave the distinctive little shudder that spoke of deep sleep that she stopped, her breath shifting the dark curls by his temple.

‘Thank you.’ Benneit’s whisper sounded rough even to him, certainly not grateful, but she smiled. Against his son’s dark hair, her profile was a carved cameo, a gentle sweep of a line that accentuated the pucker of her lower lip and the sharp curve of her chin. Stubborn. Joane Langdale might be the Uxmores’ drudge, but Jo was another thing entirely, he thought.

Perhaps it would not be so terrible for her to stay with them until he finalised his affairs with the McCrieffs. He would be busy with his own matters and the preparations for the feud ball and she could make herself useful; anyone who could talk his son out of a bout of illness in a carriage was worth keeping around.

Chapter Four

‘England is now behind us, Mrs Langdale,’ Lochmore said, his voice low. ‘Welcome to the land of the green and grey, sheep, cows, swift weddings and whisky, of which I wish I had a flask about now.’

Jo glanced out the window, but there was not much to see. The rain was alternately pouring and spattering on the window and, despite the hot bricks at their feet, it was chilly. The cloak Celia had given her after hers was ruined dragging one of the children out of the muddy millpond was of poor material and unlined and it was not much help against the cold penetrating the carriage in gusts as they lurched over a rutted stretch of road. She leaned her hand on the pane, its surface cold and slippery. Blurry cottages slunk by, tucked low into the green. Scotland.

She untied and pulled down the curtain, blocking the view.

‘Don’t.’

She jumped at the sharp word, turning.

‘Tie it back. The curtain.’

She was too surprised to obey immediately. ‘It is cold.’

Lochmore shifted Jamie’s sleeping form and reached under the seat to pull out a colourful afghan.

‘Here. Put that around you. Leave the curtain open.’

She retied the sash and unfolded the blanket. The wool was fine and warm and she wrapped it about her, grateful but confused. Then annoyance struck her, a little late but welcome. She was not here to stay. She need not be compliant as she was at Uxmore.

‘Please,’ she said and he frowned.

‘Please, what?’

‘Please, Mrs Langdale, would you mind leaving the curtains open? I find it easier to brood while viewing the rain and gloom in all its glory.’

His chest expanded, then his breath came out in a long hiss.

‘I used to consider Lady Theale an astute woman, but now I am doubtful—she assured me you would give me no cause for complaint, Mrs Langdale.’

‘I apologise for giving you cause for complaint, Your Grace.’

He sighed and shook his head.

‘You should apologise for making me feel like a churlish fool.’

‘I only assume responsibility for my mistakes, Your Grace. Not for a state of affairs beyond my control.’

It was a risk, but it paid off. The tension evident in the grooves in his cheeks eased into the glimmer of a smile.

‘Kicking a man while he is down is not sportsmanlike, Mrs Langdale.’

‘It may not be, but he is much easier to reach when he is, Your Grace.’

He laughed and turned to inspect the passing scenery and, after a moment, Jo did the same.

* * *

The silence fell again but for the patter of rain and the sounds of the sleepers. Benneit watched the slide of green and grey beyond the rain, caught between amusement at Mrs Langdale’s impertinence and frustration at himself. How the devil did he always manage to come out the worst from their exchanges?

She had a point, though. His reaction had been instinctive, but far too harsh. He usually controlled the outer manifestations of his condition, but sometimes when he was weary that control slipped. And when it did, it left this foul ache in his arms and chest, as if he had gone a dozen rounds sparring with Angus at his best. He shifted his shoulders, cursing his weakness. Thirty years had passed and he was still as cracked a vessel as ever.

He glanced at Joane Langdale but she did not turn. She looked like an urchin, tucked into Mrs Merry’s blanket. His housekeeper had used every colour of wool she could find and the result bordered on disaster and yet was charming, like an English spring garden chopped up and woven together. Against its riot of colour Mrs Langdale’s delicate colouring was more ethereal than pixyish. Soft.

She raised the shawl, brushing her cheek with it furtively, the way Jamie did when he was sneaking a tart from Mrs Merry. Even through the clop of the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the carriage, he thought he could hear the faint burr of fabric on flesh and his own cheek warmed, his fingers tingling as if making contact with the shawl, or her cheek. A snake of a shudder made him shift his legs in surprise and discomfort and he shoved his hands into his pockets and turned again to the blurry greyness outside.

Boredom and a wayward mind were dangerous things. Especially after an exhausting week of travelling, his mind caught between Jamie’s ills and the daunting challenges awaiting him back home. He should keep his thoughts on those challenges, but the image lingered like a painting in a gallery one kept returning to inspect—the curve of her cheek just brushed with colour and the surprising lushness of her lower lip nestled against the blanket. His mind fixed on it like an eagle on prey—circling, honing in on every angle and aspect, trying to understand what on earth was so appealing and why his hands were hot and buzzing with discomfort that had nothing to do with his ancient weakness.

He looked resolutely at Jamie, recalling his visit to McCrieff Castle the day before his departure for London. McCrieff preening like a prize cock, Lady Tessa calm and sweet, her generous figure presented in a slightly garish pink that spoke more of her mother’s tastes and ambitions than her own. She was intelligent, too—thoroughly aware of the political and financial import of such a union and clearly willing to undertake it. She was the perfect bride for the Duke of Lochmore.

If only he were not that Duke.

Chapter Five

It was early evening by the time they stopped. It wasn’t raining, but the courtyard was deep in puddles. Jamie ran ahead in Angus’s wake, heedless of the wet, but Jo—weary and stiff after the interminable week of travelling, but mindful of her one pair of inadequate boots—took the circuitous route around the collection of small lakes in the courtyard. It was only when sunlight crashed through the clouds on the horizon with the suddenness of a charging bull that she looked up from her careful manoeuvring.

What she saw stopped her short. From within the fogbound confines of the carriage she had given up trying to make out the landscape and she was utterly unprepared. The inn stood between the road and a wide rushing stream and beyond it were mountains. Not hills. Mountains. Steep uncompromising eruptions that reached into the sky, the setting sun turning green into emerald and grey rock into gleaming obsidian. The peaks ruffled the clouds, turning the sky into something alive. She could well imagine that beyond those clouds in this strange land there would be another world, some place the valiant and brave could reach if they scaled these verdant monsters.

She didn’t even notice Lochmore come to stand beside her.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, frowning up at the hills.

‘What? Oh, no. It is merely that I have never seen anything so magnificent. Ever.’

He smiled and, though he looked as weary as she felt, this sudden softening of his features, and the flush of sunlight raising the green to prominence in his shadowed eyes and emphasising the raven silk of his hair, made her feel that her words would be as true for him as well. Otherworldly. Unreachable.

‘You like it.’

It was such a mild reflection of the passion the sights aroused in her, but said with such uncharacteristic satisfaction that she laughed, warmed from within.

‘Yes, Your Grace. I like it very well indeed.’

‘That is good, most people find it...daunting. Too stark for their tastes. They miss the rolling English pastures.’

They. She had heard as much from Bella when she visited Uxmore. Along with a host of other complaints. She looked away from him and back at the peaks. The clouds were tearing free of them, revealing more and more grey and green to the sun. They looked miles high, but also just within reach. It was dizzying.

‘It is stark, but that is precisely what is so magnificent. I love the English countryside, but it is a mild, warm kind of love. This is...different. Overwhelming. I don’t want to stop looking.’

They stood for a moment in the quiet of the courtyard, looking. The water gurgled and rushed past, filling the silence with life. Then he sighed and took her elbow gently.

‘There will be plenty more mountains to see, I promise. But now we should feed Jamie and put him to bed. By the tone of his grumbling those last miles, we will be lucky to avoid a scene and I, for one, do not feel equal to it. It has been a very long day and even longer week.’

She nodded, absurdly warmed by his casual hold on her arm and the assumption of intimacy in the way he shared his thoughts about Jamie. Perhaps if Alfred had lived, if they had had a family, she might one day have found herself at a similar moment. If... If... If...

* * *

The Duke’s prediction, unfortunately, proved accurate. Jamie’s grumbling and grizzling in the carriage were not calmed by the food. He kicked off his shoes, complained about the chair, the food, the fire and hovered precipitously on the verge of a full-blown tantrum.

Jo wished it was her right to sweep the overtired boy into her arms, yet all she could do was distract him and entertain him, but to no avail. A chance comment towards the end of the meal reminded him of his dog and his eyes, already red from weariness, glazed with tears.

‘I want to be home! Why didn’t we bring Flops? I wouldn’t be sad if I had Flops.’

‘We cannot bring a dog on such a trip, Jamie...’ the Duke replied. He, too, was losing the battle to remain calm and his voice sounded like gravel crunched underfoot.

‘Yes, we can,’ Jamie shot back. ‘I would care for him and he would sleep with me and I would hold him on my lap in the carriage.’

‘There is hardly any point to discussing it now, Jamie. In a few days we will be home.’

‘No, I want to be home now! I hate going to London.’

‘That isn’t what you said when we visited Astley’s and Gunter’s, the Menagerie at the Exeter Exchange and...’

Jamie surged to his feet, sweeping his plate from the table. It cracked into two half-moons and a flash of fear flickered through the storm on his face.

Jo instinctively bent to retrieve the piece closest to her, but Benneit’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, stopping her.

‘Pick up those pieces, Jamie.’

She felt the rumble of his voice through the hand that held her arm. He was not exerting any force on her, but somehow she was incapable of extracting her arm so she sat there, watching the two Lochmores.

Jamie breathed deeply and then the word came out like a puff of smoke. ‘Shan’t!’

‘James Hamish Lochmore. Pick them up now.’

Jamie proceeded to kick the piece closest to him. As he was only in stockings this was not a wise move. The cut was not deep, but he stared at the tiny stain of red at the tip of his toe and ran into the small adjoining room where his cot was laid out, slamming the door behind him.

She waited for the wails of crying, but though she heard the creaking of the cot as Jamie flung himself into it, there was no other sound, just the Duke’s breathing, harsh against his clenched teeth as he glared at the door. He had not let go of her arm and she was not about to draw attention to herself. So she watched his fingers on the grey wool of her pelisse. The lines across each knuckle, sharply drawn. She wished she could put her other hand on his, soothe the tension, tell him not to worry.

His grip softened and though his gaze was fixed on the door as if engaged in a staring contest with it, his hand smoothed the fabric of her sleeve twice. Then he caught himself, looked down and drew his hand away. If she had not felt peculiarly bereft at his withdrawal, she might have smiled at the flush of embarrassment that marked his high cheekbones.

‘I apologise, Mrs Langdale. I did not want you to pick it up for him. He must learn to master these tantrums of his.’

‘Must he?’

‘Of course. He will one day have to assume serious responsibilities and there will be no room for such outbursts.’

The silence fell again as she weighed her words.

‘What a pity one cannot hire children.’

‘What?’

‘I think two or three would do. Once we arrive we could send them back.’

‘What the devil are you talking about?’

‘I am talking about a four-year-old boy trapped for days on end in a carriage with three adults, all in various states of ill humour. Jamie’s only sin is that, unlike some of us, he has not yet learnt to mask his ill humour. Having often travelled with a herd of ill-behaved children in carriages, I can assure you Jamie’s brand of tantrums would have gone utterly unnoticed in the Uxmore carriage over a mere hour’s journey. So perhaps if we filled the carriage with other children, Jamie’s behaviour might not appear so offensive to you. Goodnight, Your Grace.’